Collin
Macmillan Turnbull was born on the 23rd of November 1924. He was a
British-American Anthropologist. In 1959 Turnbull traveled to integrate himself
in the BaMbuti tribe in the republic of Congo. Turnbull went to Congo as a
curator for the Museum of Natural History’s African Ethnological collection.The
tribe Turnbull went to was the BaMbuti pygmies. They are one of several
indigenous pygmy groups in the Congo. The BaMbuti tribe is located in the Ituri
forest in Congo. Tha BaMbuti people are relatively small in size.
The Mbuti’s live in the forest,
where the visibility for the pygmies is around 100 yards. That means that they
do not ever really see anything far away and therefore are not accustomed to
distance. Turnbull took his friend Kenge to the plains of Congo. Some miles
from them there were a herd of buffalos. Kenge first thought the buffalos were
insects since they were far away they looked small, and when Turnbull told him
that the ”insects” in reality was buffalos, Kenge did not believe him. Turnbull
found that the Mbuti’s don’t really have a perception for distance and size,
and that they don’t understand that when objects move away from you they become
smaller as the distance increases.
Turnbull’s discoveries show us that perception
is something that is learned over time through exposure to distance and
objects. It shows us that perception is not something we are born with a sense
of perception. It is learned over time and experience. But the method used
making this discovery has its limitations. The “study” is limited to the
BaMbuti’s in the Ituri Forest; it was not performed on other isolated tribes in
other parts of the world.
